For Blood
by MochaKimono
Summary: Kalonaya is a Shu'halo driven to seek the enemies of her tribe and defeat them before they can threaten what she holds dear. But how much is she willing to leave behind to meet the Scourge in battle? How much will she lose of herself?
1. Chapter 1

As the blade bit into the wood, flake by flake, the form of a raven began to emerge. Shavings and splinters slowly accumulated across the tauren's lap. The needly pick put in the shapes of feathers on the wings, the scoop smoothed the beak, like the little knot of wood had been an egg and this bird were hatching from it as she carved.

"It is coming along well," said an approaching voice. It was one of the elders. The old bull settled himself down in front of Kalonaya on the grass. "You have a knack."

She huffed faintly. "I'd rather be out there, defending us against our enemies."

"Do you not give yourself over to the fight. You must make room in your life for peace. There must always be a balance."

"How? The quilboar seem to multiply overnight, and the centaur are always restless. They'll push us out as soon as given the chance."

"They are not here _now_," the elder said.

"They'll _come_ here!"

The bull sighed patiently at her. "So are you going to leave immediately?" he asked.

She started to answer, then stopped, ears dropping. "Maybe," she finally said.

"I hope you can manage to stay a while after," was all he said. He stood once more, and left her to her thoughts.

How could there be room for peace in her life, when threats of war pressed in on them from all sides, when the lands to roam shrank as the centaur decimated what remained and the dwarves came to disturb the earth for the sake of old trinkets, and zealous quilboar sought to raze anything that touched their holy land, tainted with the blood of their fallen god? How could she sit down and do nothing when at any moment, any one of their enemies could seek out their tiny traveling tribe and stamp it out?

She couldn't. There was never a choice in her mind. There was no such thing as a balance of war and peace in one life; _her_ life was for war, so that the others' could be for peace. _They_ would be the ones who could relax around a campfire together and waste their time on games and feasts. She would be out there, ensuring that it was all possible.

But she had stopped in one place too long away from home, made a mistake she couldn't take back now, one she didn't realize she had made until she had long moved on. And now she was here, carving totems, cutting gems, doing what little she could to be productive _somehow_.

She hoped the Earthmother would spare them danger, yet also knew this was impossible, and that from now on, Kalonaya would have more reason than ever to protect her people.


	2. Chapter 2

She had not left immediately, remaining tied to the village even as it roamed the plains. They followed the herds and went where the rain fell, and like the tents they disassembled and carried to each new campsite, Kalonaya felt like mere luggage toted along.

The others assured her that no one else felt this way. She'd done enough already, and everyone would understand if she chose to settle down and enjoy herself for once. Other warriors would meet their enemies on the field. Other hunters would bring home the prey. Crafting for a living was not dishonorable; everyone had a role to fill, and perhaps this was the path the Earthmother had given her.

Kalonaya did not agree. Not knowing what was out there, having to trust their fate to anyone else, it killed her. She couldn't stand this idling about. Trinkets and toys, bah! But if she were reined in to do something so sedentary, she could at least justify the need to dig for materials, and found herself wandering off to find the ores and gems she needed. The feel of a pick axe as it ate the earth and the feel of a grinding tool creating a cut felt nearly war-like as to be satisfactory.

Sometimes she walked for the sake of walking, and almost dared the night air to throw monsters at her so that she could fight them and triumph. Should it worry her? She couldn't feel glad anymore, without the fight, yet before it had only been duty and now it was all she cared for. Without the fight, she had no purpose.

She didn't say these things aloud - not anymore - and the young calves of the tribe knew nothing of her old warrior's life, only that she was constantly struck with wanderlust. It probably became apparent how she felt. She was quietly encouraged to allow herself to hunt, at least. She leapt at the opportunity and felt some pride to bring home food, and sated to battle once more.

It was not a hunger for blood. She didn't need that violence. But anyone could grow plants, it took true strength to down a beast. It took cunning to find your enemies and stymie them at the source. It served the best purpose, it wasn't about blood.

It didn't matter. Years went by and her wandering led her further each time. There were vague, willowy reprimands upon her return, and sometimes hurt faces, thinking she had laid down the warmongering for good. And then arguments were had, when stung she replied that she wasn't _looking_ for war, she was _stopping_ it! War came to everyone whether they asked for it or not, and all she was doing was making sure it didn't come to _them_!

Her time spent away lengthened with each trip. The path of the tribe's movements were predictable enough that even if she spent a year out in the wastes of Desolace, or the jungles of Feralas, she could find home.

After all, nothing she did, none of the fighting, would matter one bit if she didn't have something to protect.

But it always seemed that these problems would never cease. She caught wind of humans setting up in Dustwallow Marsh, and of the Grimtotems making their trouble in the various mountain ranges nearby, but she could not bring herself to fight the latter, and dared not oppose the former's might - especially considering the humans had some sort of peaceful arrangement with the friendly neighborhood orcs.

Problems still, problems that could only be solved by violence, if not flat-out war than skirmishes. The orcs seemed far more appraising of her attitude and seemed gleeful to tell her of places to find their mutual enemies to destroy. And she eagerly accepted the duty.

It was down along the Golden Road as she headed for Freewind Post, to see how her brethren there were faring, that she tripped upon an inkling of an enemy far worse than anything she had encountered so far.


	3. Chapter 3

Passing through the Southern Barrens was always risky. A simple pebbly path winding through the wild hills, with nary a speck of civilization in sight otherwise and the grasses bristling with wild animals, was not a place to be caught unarmed. Not only were Alliance scouts known to patrol here, a Silithid nest brewed in the corners and wickedly intelligent raptors were always on the prowl, but it was sacred ground to the quilboar.

Their prickly god had allegedly died here, fouling the ground with his blood and causing the massive thorns to choke the hillsides. The pigs nested here and raided the countryside's other races when the mood struck them, which was often. Kalonaya was glad that the Shu'halo's enemies were also all of each other's enemies. If ever the quilboar, centaur, harpies and gnolls banded together, her tiny tribe would have to join one of the larger, permanent settlements for safety.

Of course she was not surprised when the thorned roots sprang up from under her hooves and entangled her legs, and spear-wielding pigmen leaped from the brush a moment later, squealing their war cries. She'd done this dance too many times before.

Brandishing a claymore more massive than any human-made weapon, she quickly cut down her attackers, freed herself from the roots, and charged the geomancer who barely had the time to register her fear before Kalonaya's blade chopped her in half like a sapling.

But something was wrong about these quilboar. They smelled as if they had been dead for weeks already and they didn't bleed as much as they should. In fact, one of the warriors didn't bleed at all; he merely oozed a slow, brackish grime. Upon further inspection, Kalonaya saw their skin was rotting away and blackened at the orifices, their spiny hair so brittle it fell out in clumps at a nudge of her hoof.

Just what the hell was going on here?

She had seen diseased things before, rabies and other fevers of the mind in animals she had been forced to slay, but this was different. They weren't just sick. They had died long before she had met them - died, and didn't stop moving.

She burned the bodies off the road to hopefully prevent the spread of their illness, and moved on. Perhaps those at Freewind Post would know something about this...


	4. Chapter 4

What she learned was worse than she had feared. The tauren at the post were aware of the disease, as were those at Camp Taurajo. As far as anyone knew, nothing _lived_ in Razorfen Downs any longer. The capital city of the quilboar, where the skull of their very god lay embedded in the dirt, had become a festering city of the dead... and no longer quite dead.

Sadly, there was nothing to be done about this. The thorny stronghold was too deep to penetrate by the paltry numbers of the villages, even if put together. And no one knew how this had happened, either. Many years ago, quilboar lived there. Now, only the rotting, walking husks remained, and the source of this infestation remained a mystery.

Kalonaya knew then, that her purpose was in there. Perhaps not _in_ Razorfen Downs itself, but in this plague, in hunting it down. Her destiny was in this fight ahead.

It was just about defending the Ravenfeathers from a potential threat. It was not about blood.

There was nothing more to learn in the south, and she went north and east, to the young city of Orgrimmar. The orcs had traveled the world over and knew much of war.

There she picked up more rumors and facts. This plague was new to Kalimdor, but the eastern continent's northern half was slowly turning over to it. Towns, cities, kingdoms were crumbling, converting to it, not by mistake of transmission but by some deliberate force, some will that moved them in tandem.

There were no doubts left in her mind now. Any threat she had ever faced before paled to what loomed across the sea - that which had begun to appear uncomfortably close to her homelands.

More sniffing around brought small tidings of good news, at least. In opposition to these undead was an organization called the Argent Dawn. For once, the Shu'halo warrior knew she couldn't hope to stand alone, nor even with a small group. She needed to find these Argents and join their cause. And she needed to bring as many people with her, to take the fight to the enemy, rather than let it come to them. It was one thing for centaur bandits to find your camp - it was another for your land itself to die because you did nothing to stop the coming of the Scourge.


	5. Chapter 5

The tribe sat in stunned silence, not moving, barely breathing when Kalonaya finished telling them what she knew. She was exhausted from a hurried trip home, but urgent and almost frighteningly intense. They knew in the disgust in her voice that what she'd seen was not a lie. They believed it, and yet, it was almost unbelievable.

"How could an entire kingdom be turned into the undead? Surely they could have fought this somehow," said an incredulous listener.

"The Earthmother would never allow this to happen!" said a druid in anger. "What you speak of is a travesty against nature! She would not let her body decay. Nothing will keep the bodies of her children from returning to the earth! Nothing has the power to go against her will like this!"

"Razorfen Downs is already a city of undead!" Kalonaya replied.

"Then it is their own doing for their worship to a dead god! The blood-stained lands are cursed!"

"What about the humans?"

"Who's to say the orcs weren't lying? How could they possibly know what's going on in human lands?"

"They've been at war with the humans for years. They were held prisoner by them after their wars. They know! They've traveled more than any of us have."

"Kalonaya, we do not think you lie," said the patient bull elder, "But what can we do?"

"We go and meet them in battle. We stop the infestation before it reaches us!"

"_All_ of us?"

"All of us able," she said. "Anyone able to fight. The Earthmother will cry out and we will die if the Scourge comes here. We must go and join this Argent Dawn. They fight the undead. They take anyone willing to join."

"Not all of our able warriors should leave the tribe, Kalonaya, for then we would be defenseless against everything else," the elder said.

Nothing could be more persuasive than that. She stalled. "Not everyone, then."

"Will _you_ stay?"

"Of course not!" she said, offended. "I will never turn my back on my duty."

Someone else snorted in derision. She glared. Awkward coughs and glances went around the small crowd.

"I would be a coward if I didn't go. And even if no one else does, I _will_ go!" she proclaimed. She eyed the listeners in silent challenge. How _dare_ they ask her to remain in the face of such an enemy? How could they not understand _exactly_ how important it was for her to defend them, how much she and all of them stood to lose if they did nothing? No task in the world was more important right now. _None_.


	6. Chapter 6

The stench of this place was worse than she could ever have imagined. The ground was sticky with blood and ichor, the air was thick with spores and smoke. Swollen trees choked on their infection; tree stumps pulsed with it. An orange haze clouded the landscape. Through the fog shambled the blood-smeared corpses of the ex-living. Their hungry gurgles echoed throughout.

Through the bloated, dying forest, through remnants of farmland now home to churning cauldrons of sickness and streets patrolled by the stitched-together abominations, Kalonaya had become separated from the others and lost. She thought there were screams and the sounds of battle, but from which hill did they come? Or were they just the wails of the dead and the echoing replay of their own deaths? Such phenomena had haunted them all.

Worse yet were those ghouls that wore familiar faces, comrades from last week, now gray, vicious, and mindless. Everyone that fell would be their enemy, and every enemy had to be cut down, no matter if it was the paladin you shared a barracks with, no matter if it was a dimpled little girl or the rest of her family. They would destroy you, and had to be destroyed.

Kalonaya thought it would never end. Their numbers were endless, and the Dawn's were few, and every loss of an Argent meant one more they'd have to fight in the Scourge.

She saw their rotting faces leap from the darkness in her dreams. Her nostrils seared with the scent of old, burning flesh while awake. Even if she won this fight, it would never end.

She didn't have time for regrets now. She told herself it was all for them. All for home. All for family. Her life was for war, so that theirs could be for peace.

She had been separated from the rest of the unit and knew, suddenly, that her destiny was not to win. She would die, honorably in battle, taking down as many of them as she could. She had lived for war and she would die a warrior's death.

Subtlety was gone. She came out from hiding behind a wall. The innumerable undead slowly turned to gaze at her. She roared a battlecry in her native tongue and rushed forth to meet them.

She hacked through quite a few of them with ease. The shambling dead were slow to react. But they soon began to overwhelm her, and not all undead were mindless: skeletal mages, their bones draped in tattered robes, stood back and rained spells on her. Frost worked its way down into her muscle, so cold it burned, so cold she could barely feel the jagged claws and teeth gouging into her.

She swung the blade almost recklessly now, as her muscles grew weak and nausea worked its way into her. The infection was starting to root its way in. She roared again. The sword was almost invisible under the masses of innards, flesh and hair wrapped around the blade. She continued to cut a swathe, trying to reach a caster before it was too late. If she could take one out, she'd feel satisfied. Just one, that's all she wanted.

She felt so heavy now, she was made of stones, yet so light, she could barely feel her own skin. She fell to her knees and tried to swing the blade, but the swarm was too thick, too many, all over her, covered in ice and blood, covered in the crawling dead, covered in darkness.


	7. Chapter 7

Kalonaya awoke suddenly from the nightmare but she - something was wrong, she wasn't in bed - she was standing outside the Chapel, but she hadn't been sleepwalking, something was wrong, something was wrong with _her_.

Her blade was in her hands, but it wasn't her blade, it was a wicked, massive sword marked with runes, and her armor was not her armor, and it felt so easy to bear, and her - her body, something, something was wrong, she was cold and yet not cold, she was not here, she was possessing herself like a ghost, the air was not there but the ground was screaming, a white light was screaming from beneath, into her skin it burned her, but this was not her body.

Tirion was there, saying something, and everyone was looking at him and listening, and there were bodies everywhere around them all, bodies of the Argents and of the undead, all fresh, piled upon each other. The Chapel had been attacked, but she didn't remember this.

She dropped her sword-that-was-not-her-sword and tore off her gloves to stare at her hands, which were not her hands, they didn't feel right, she couldn't feel the _air_, there was no temperature, she couldn't feel her pulse, she couldn't feel her lungs, something was horribly wrong with her body and she was wearing someone else's armor, and she was covered in blood, fresh, wet, _human_ blood.

Another voice spoke after Tirion, a dreadful voice that echoed from somewhere outside the man that spoke it, a man dressed in black armor bearing the icons of the Scourge.

Looking around, Kalonaya saw many more of these people, in the same armor, black with those pale blue runes. They all had swords like hers. They were all listening to this man, and she realized she knew him somehow. Mograine, that was his name. But she'd never seen him before, but she had.

Things began to emerge from the haze. She felt as if she had been drugged and sleeping hard, blindfolded and deafened, and now, the memories were revealing themselves, slowly, in jagged pieces.

Tyr's Hand. Havenshire. New Avalon.

Places like Light's Hope Chapel, bastions of the living cornered against the sea and fighting against the Scourge. Directly east, backs to the ocean, the humans had turned to fight, and then, turned to flee. The necropolis still hung overhead, casting its grisly shadow on the land it had come to destroy. The land _she_ had helped destroy.

She looked in horror to her hands, and then to the blade at her feet. The blade had bit into the living. It had eaten holy men, cleaved women and carved children.


	8. Chapter 8

Kicking in the tavern door with one stamp of her mighty hoof, the black-furred figure stooped in through the tiny door frame. The patrons screamed and fell from their seats. They ran downstairs and upstairs and clawed at the locks on the windows, trying to get away. Kalonaya raised a hand. The air chilled with an audible _snap!_ and ice gripped her victims' feet. They cried in terror, standing helpless and immobile.

She snorted dismissively at their cowardice. They would be but paltry foot soldiers in the beautiful war machine. Not like her. In life, there was no meaning. In death, her courage had finally been rewarded. Her Master appreciated her lust for battle. He'd sent her here for blood.

She _knew_ their blood, pumping as it had once pumped in her. As loud as stampeding kodo, she swore she could _hear_ their blood. Disgusting, hot, growing, dying bodies, so vulnerable, always changing, full of diseases, wombs and emotions. So imperfect, but her Master would make them perfect, as he had made Kalonaya. No more dying. Her body, still, timeless and cold, strong and invincible as a glacier now. Empty of all things that made her weak. No feeling. It was all about blood.

The humans were sobbing their stupid wet tears all over their stupid soft faces, begging with her in a language she didn't understand and didn't care to. In death, they would know her language. In death they were all united. In death, there was no more war, no more enemies, nothing which threatened you, the machine and all its parts were perfect and harmonious, and together they would be immortal.

The pleading was useless. They would know soon. They would feel the beautiful cold take them. For now - Kalonaya twisted her hand as if ringing a church bell. The people shrieked as their blood boiled within their veins. It ran down from their eyes and noses. Bruises blossomed across their bodies. She gestured again. Their imperfect little hearts betrayed them. Their veins ruptured in magnificent unison. A dozen bodies slumped to the floor, blood pooling around them. A few still clung to life, their bodies tenacious and too stubborn to die. They wept and gurgled. Kalonaya left them. Let them die slowly. Let them know fear. Let no one dare stand against the Scourge again.

Standing before the Chapel, Kalonaya Ravenfeather remembered all she had done and screamed as the Light screamed into her skin.


	9. Chapter 9

The bird circled the bluffs in the dying light, and streaked down through beams of gold that flickered in the shadow of a windmill, to land in front of the inert pyre. The bird's form resculpted itself into that of a robed tauren, and looked out at the tiny handful of listeners seated on log benches. Most of them had pelts as black as a raven's feathers, though one stood out with patchy red-and-cream fur. She seemed most eager to hear what the druid had to say.

He regretted now having ever doubted. Perhaps if he hadn't been so outspoken it wouldn't have pushed them to go - but it was not time for regrets. If they called him out, he would answer for it. For now, he merely bore news.

Some time after Kalonaya and the small group of warriors had left to go join the Argent Dawn, the guilt had begun to get to him. He should go and do the Earthmother's work to clean Azeroth of its taint, but stubbornly, he had stayed behind. He said, like a few others, that they were taking care of the duty that the female warrior was failing to take responsibility for. But then, that duty had asked him specifically to go after her. His ability to take wing made him the best candidate for retrieving news from afar.

But he did not want to bring the news to them.

"What is it?" asked the patchy one. "Please, please tell us. What's going on over there?"

"They... have fallen," he choked out.

The gathered listeners gasped in pain as if struck directly. The patchy one made no noise but just stared with her mouth open, eyes beginning to water.

"They fell... in battle, as... as noble warriors," he went on. "And... I pray, that the Earthmother take them into her bosom... for rest in death, instead of restless undeath."

He knew differently however. Those he had questioned told him that the bodies hadn't been recovered - not by the Dawn, in any case.

Perhaps the rest of the Ravenfeathers here guessed it too, but no one spoke it. No one asked how any burials went. No one asked if they had been burned for safety. They stood to depart, weep, and pray.

The druid approached the patchy one, who sat there still. She, too, was a druid, one he had been training before they came to Thunder Bluff. After their strongest fighters left, the tribe dissolved, going off its separate ways to join the Shu'halo settlements. He would need to find the rest and bring them the news as well. His burden was a heavy one.

"Adayahi," he said softly, kneeling before his student. "I... I think that this is... how she would have wanted to die."

"On another continent, and turned into some undead monster?"

"Defending us. Defending _you_. She did it for you." Well, Kalo had been like that long before anyway. But her restlessness and desire to defend had only grown after.

"I was hoping maybe _this_ time, she'd come back and _stay_," Ada said, and wiped her eyes. She didn't like to be seen crying. She was stoic in that regard, but instead of being dour, she tried to stay upbeat. Sadness simply didn't fit into her preferred image.

"Maybe she would have," he lied.

"No, it was always about the fight with her. I think she resented me," Ada said bluntly, with a shrug as if such a statement was nothing. She off glanced to the side. "Always out for blood... I guess blood's thinner than blood, huh?"

He didn't say anything to that.

"I just wanted..." Adayahi shook her head and stood, not letting herself say anything else that would appear vulnerable. The older druid felt sorry for her then. Always putting on a happy face, always being the proud one, defensive of Kalonaya, regardless of anyone's wavering opinions. She had said nothing when Kalonaya left this last time, always careful not to oppose, just to support, always hoping that if she was a good enough daughter, Kalo wouldn't leave again. But that was the problem: Ada was just _too_ precious to let the dangers of the outside world fester and come to get her. The warrior would've always wandered, but not so driven, not so out for blood, to protect her own blood.

"I'll be visiting the others," he said. "Earthmother be with you."

"And with you as well," Ada said as she walked away.


End file.
